Sunday May 17, 2009 12:55 am

DC Comics Review: Batman Confidential #29

A bit of a disappointment this time around for the creative team of Andrew Kreisberg and Scott McDaniel. I’ve been raving about the writing that Kreisberg had been doing with his previous story arc in “Batman: Confidential” which was entitled “Do You Understand These Rights?”. This was a great story that presented a retelling of the first time Batman captured the Joker and brought him in for booking at Gotham Police headquarters. The Joker that Kreisberg portrayed in his story was fantastic; funny and evil at the same time; the way you would like to see the Joker in any comic book story. The peanut murder was a classic! I highly recommend picking this story arc as a trade or going to your local comic store to get the back issues.

I was looking forward to the “Bad Cop” storyline because it’s a direct sequel to the “Rights” storyline and Kreisberg and McDaniel have returned to tell the tale. This wasn’t a bad story, but it also wasn’t a great story. If you’re a Batman addict, I would recommend it as it maybe one of the few Bruce Wayne/Batman stories we maybe seeing for a while. If you can do without Bats, then I would pass.

The story focuses on the police officer Geoff Sancoe whose wife committed suicide thanks to a trick by the Joker. Both men are in Arkham and are in cells right next to each other. The Joker is torturing the guy with bad jokes. The Joker however convinces Sancoe to escape as he sees that he is on the verge of insanity and believes that he will cause some damage on the outside if given a chance - basically doing the Joker’s dirty work indirectly.

Thanks to the Joker, Sancoe has transformed into the new super-villain: Bad Cop. I’m not crazy about the name. I think it’s a bit lame to call this former police officer Bad Cop, but whatever. Bad Cop heads to the Gotham Police Academy for some reason where we see a bunch of rookie cops which include a young Renee Montoya. Who I wish was still a cop in the regular DC Universe and not the new Question. While practicing their marksmanship, Bad Cop shuts down the lights and kills one of the rookies. He beats up the others, but Montoya goes toe-to-toe with him. Bad Cop gets the upper hand and is about to pull the trigger on her when Batman arrives to save the day and we are left there until the next issue.

Maybe I’m being a bit too hard on this story, but for some reason it really didn’t grab me. I feel it was a little too quick for Sancoe to be driven into becoming a new super-villain - even though he’s been on the edge of insanity for a while. I’ll stick with this story as “Confidential” is on my pull list and until I really don’t care about what’s going on in the storylines I’ll keep reading. This is a two-part story which I feel should have been longer. I think a more detailed descent into madness would have been much more interesting for this character. Up next in “Confidential” we have X-Force/X-Statix writer Peter Milligan coming in for a five-part story dealing with the Russian mob. See ya soon.